Disclaimer: Angel and all its characters are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. "It's not easy being green" lyrics by Joe Rapposo...originally performed by Kermit the Frog who's the property of Jim Henson. Please don't sue me.
A/N: It's been over three years since this appeared as the first three chapters of an epic called 'Dea Ex Machina'. At the time, it was suggested that it would work better as a stand-alone. In hindsight, it does, so I've separated it out and cleaned it up.
--
"Oh really? Well I am not some mystical vending machine, here to spit out answers every time you waltz in with a problem. I have a heart. Granted, it's located in my left butt cheek, but it's still a heart, and that heart is broken. I mean, why is it nobody ever cares about my destiny? Everyone who walks through that door is all about "me, me, me" -- what about my me? My me's important!" – Lorne, from "Fredless"
--
The bar was well off the Vegas Strip, badly lit and full of smoke. Lorne didn't care. The bartender had given him a blank look when he'd asked for a Sea Breeze and served him something that might have been tequila mixed with Red Bull. He didn't care about that either. He just sat with his head in his hand and watched as a leather-clad biker woman with pudge oozing out from between the laces of her corset got up on stage and belted out a very off-key rendition of "I Will Always Love You". She hit a particularly high note particularly wrong, and he buried his head in the crook of his arm. Not even the tequila was enough to stop that from making his horns hurt.
He might have dosed off at the bar, 'cause the next thing he knew, someone new took the mic, "This next one's going off to Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok Clan who's here tonight and in dire need of a little pick-me-up:
It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that…"
That got him to lift his head and turn. Seated on the barstool in the middle of the tiny stage was a petite young woman with a cute black bob and gothic eyeliner. She held the mic with one hand, angling it down towards her mouth like someone who knew the music business and how to best capture sound.
"It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky…"
She looked vaguely familiar, even though he knew he'd never laid eyes on her in his life. She just had that sort of face, that sort of look that said "Sure, you know me". She could have been the girl at the back of the class in high school—if he'd ever gone to high school—or a face in the crowd at one of his performances when he used to work this town.
"But green's the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a tree…"
He was instantly suspicious. Then, he was kicking himself for being so boo-hoo paranoid. "Definitely spent way too much time with the doom and gloom crowd," Lorne informed the bartender after signaling for a refill. "Maybe I just won the Publishers' Clearing House Award or something cheery and non-apocalyptic like that."
"When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be."
She did have a nice set of pipes, he mused, and she definitely wasn't radiating evil. Hell, she wasn't radiating much of anything except raw power. That, in his book of experience, was generally not a good thing, but, hey, there's a first time for everything. Right?
Song finished, she gave a little, blushing bow and clambered down from the stage, heading straight for the empty seat beside him. "Tequila and Red Bull?" she raised an eyebrow as she hopped up on the stool beside him, "Doesn't seem quite your style." She plucked the bartender's sleeve. "Any chance you got cranberry and grapefruit juice back there?"
"Yeah." The bartender looked a little perplexed at her request, though that shouldn't be too surprising—he looked like the owners had found him under a rock somewhere.
"One fifth vodka, four-fifths of the grapefruit in a highball glass with a splash of cranberry juice," she instructed, "And make it two." The bartender set to work, and, in a minute, presented her with two Sea Breezes. She slid one down the bar until her elbow brushed Lorne's. "Probably not top shelf, but I didn't pick this dive." Her green eyes were twinkling mischievously as she took a sip of her drink.
"Honey pie, not that I wasn't impressed with your little ditty up there or your fabulous schooling of the bartender in the proper way to mix a drink, but I don't know you from Charlotte Church." He did, however, abandon the nasty tequila concoction in favor of the Sea Breeze. It wasn't the best he'd ever had, but since the best had been made with liquor from the stores of an evil law firm, he wasn't being too picky these days.
"I'm the Oracle," she answered casually, like she was admitting to being a vacuum cleaner salesmen or a professional dog walker. Lorne raised his brow and took another sip of his drink. "Higher Power," she continued, "Sent to help get the Destiny Man back on the right path so he can start putting others back on the road to a well-balanced future and maybe happy endings."
Lorne's carefully maintained look of ambivalent friendliness turned into an out-right scowl as he turned away. "Not interested."
She kicked him, and if you've never had the pleasure of being kicked by someone wearing steel-toed combat boots, Lorne could tell you it hurts! "Hey, what was that for?" He reached down and massaged his calf muscle where her toe had connected with it.
"That's for being such a pain in the ass," she said. She sighed and looked around, then shook her head. Her bob flared up in a twirl of hair, and when it settled again, it was blond and shoulder-length and her get-up had changed from gothic to jeans and a man's button down white shirt. Unsurprisingly, nobody in the bar seemed to notice. "You're the first on a very long list of people I need to prod back on to their intended paths. I was hoping since, you know—you can read people's destinies—you might be one of the easier ones, but I guess not." She reached over and downed the remainder of the tequila concoction in one gulp. "So, since I now see I've got a very long and bumpy road ahead of me, why don't we try this again? I'm the Oracle, nice to meet you." She stuck her hand out.
Lorne looked at her for a long minute. That cute-but-not-so-cute-that-she-stood-out face of hers was radiating nothing but honestly. If anything, his empathy powers were telling him she'd even opened up her psyche a crack to give him a look-see. "That only works, honey, if you're singing."
"Oh," she said, a little disappointed, then slammed the door shut on her feelings. "I should have remembered that."
The look in her eye made him feel sympathetic—first day on the job and the one she'd thought she'd have in the bag was being a pain in the arse. He reached over and patted her knee. "Not your fault, honeycakes. The name's Lorne, by the way, though I think you know that already? What brings you to Las Vegas?"
"You," she said. She held the empty glass up to the light and turned it from side-to-side. "The Powers That Be are a little curious as to why the empathy demon is not being so empathetic these days."
"So they sent you." Lorne wasn't too happy with the Powers right now…or their Champion, for that matter. Currently, he wished nothing more to put the past as far behind him as a gas card and his '69 Mustang could put it.
"They already had Cordelia pegged for something else," she said, making a face. "She'd be the natural for this case since you two were friends when she was alive."
Lorne snorted. "Let me take a wild guess here and say they sent her to old Angel-cakes and left me with the newbie."
Her eyes, still green despite the shape-change, flashed. "I'll have you know that I'm not a "newbie" by any definition. I was an oracle at Delphi for thirteen years before I died, and I've been doing the Powers' ass-kicking for them since before…before Rome was founded. Problem is, it's always been literal ass-kicking--I'm sort of new at this whole "talking" thing. My human job didn't really equip me with people skills—the whole sitting in a cave, getting high off petrol-chemical fumes, and babbling incoherently thing, you know?"
Lorne nodded. "So now you're the Oracle and have come to try and convince me to be the Powers' little puppet again. One problem with that, sugar-fly, and that's that I'm tired of dancing. I've pranced around and tried to help their Champion in his battle against the forces of darkness, evil, and bad in-flight movies, but it's gotten me nothing but heartburn and a moral crisis of epic proportions."
"Because you worked for Wolfram & Hart?"
"Because I shot Lindsey MacDonald on Angel's say-so." Just thinking about it made Lorne's stomach twist. He treated it to another gulp of Sea Breeze in an effort to soothe it. Didn't help his conscious much.
She blinked.
"I'm guessing based on how big those gorgeous green peepers of yours just got that you haven't heard about Angel trying to bring on the apocalypse a little early."
The Oracle looked down at the top of the bar and traced a finger through a ring of condensation on the laquered wood. "I've been en route for a while. What happened?"
"Took on the Circle of the Blackthorn, got Wes killed, had me shoot Lindsey as a preventative measure...the usual morally gray things that a certain vampire with a soul is always getting himself mixed up in so he can then kick himself and mope around wishing for atonement until the next round of attempting to be bad. Let me tell you, I've seen the boy wear his black hat and his white one. While the black is bad—and believe you me, it's bad—it's much less annoying than the white one when he's doing the brooding bit." He finished the Sea Breeze. "How's Cordy by the way?"
"She's fine—Powers' Golden Girl and all that," the Oracle replied with a shrug. "Probably has her hands full right now with Angel…especially if he's gotten his tail in the wringer like you say." She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and took out a folded piece of paper. "What'd you say the name of the guy you killed was again?"
"Lindsey MacDonald, and, look, I'm not very proud of it. Until a few days ago, I liked to fancy myself as a nonviolent sort of person. Just thinking about holding a gun makes my insides go all icky…"
"Shit."
He looked down at the paper that she had lain on the bar and saw it was a list of names. First on the list, his. Second, Lindsey MacDonald. "Oh, is that going to be a problem for you, sweet cheeks?" he asked, wincing a little. Higher Power or not, he was starting to take a liking to this little Oracle.
Maybe it was how straightforward she was being with him (after being surrounded by lawyers for the better part of a year, it was refreshing) or the vibrant vibes he was getting off her, but she seemed like good people.
"Just means I get to go hunting hell dimensions for him—never a fun job, but I'm used to it by now. Usually, all the guys on my list are located somewhere Down There." She folded the list back up and put in her shirt's breast pocket. "But what am I supposed to do about you?"
"I don't know, honey child, I really don't know."
The Oracle looked around the dingy club, tapping her fingers against the side of the tequila glass. Her blunt nails made teeny ringing noises on the glass that only his sensitive ears could detect over the din of what looked like a Hell's Angel singing "My Heart Will Go On". She turned back to him. "Wanna go dancing?"
He did an unabashed double-take. "Say what, sugar?"
"Dancing—it's swing night over at Louie's. You wanna go?"
He narrowed his eyes—here he was being all suspicious again—and tried to determine if there was anything more to her request than just the desire to do a little dancing. Because, hey, a little dancing was not something he was opposed to…maybe if certain former friends of his had done a little more dancing and a little less angsting, he'd be with them now, not sitting in a rundown bar with a complete stranger claiming to be a Higher Power. "Are you trying to pull a fast one on me, angel-wings? 'Cause, as I'm pretty sure I made it absolutely clear a moment ago, I'm not interested in being the Powers little green play-toy any more."
"Oh, I assure you, that was perfectly clear," she said. "I just don't feel like heading back down to Hell just yet."
There she went again with that fresh-faced cuteness. She reminded him a little of Fred, right after she'd gotten off the Pylea-bus…and speaking of Pylea, "Honey pie, I can understand that completely—I grew up in a hell dimension," Lorne said. "Horrible little place called Pylea—no music at all—I hope the Powers never sent you there." Sliding off the bar stool (and staggering only a little), he offered his elbow, and she looped her arm through it.
"Pylea, I've heard of it, but only from what I've heard of you," she said with a smile as they headed out into the street. It was well past midnight, but the Vegas neon glowed in a brilliant, perpetual false-dawn. "No music? That really sounds like Hell. Forget the fire and brimstone crap."
He looked down at her. She'd changed form again, though her height stayed the same—not tall at all—and her eyes were still green. Her hair, though, was now long, red, and curly and pulled back Bohemian-like with a scarf. The black and white polka dot skirt was designed for maximum twirl, and the top was really a leotard—this little chiclet knew how to dress for some serious swing dancing.
"Ramones or Sex Pistols?" he asked.
"Sex Pistols."
"Country music?"
"Crap."
"DMX or Run DMC?"
"Run DMC."
"Mozart or Salieri?"
"Salieri—I'll admit it—I thought Mozart was just going to be a passing fad and Salieri would be one we'd be listening to right now."
"That's right, you'd have been around to hear all this as it was being made," Lorne said, remembering how old she claimed to be even though she did not look a day over twenty-four. She laughed, and he realized he liked the sound. This Oracle was just the sort of person he would have wanted patronizing Caritas when he still owned the place. Just thinking about his little karaoke bar made him feel a twinge of homesickness. He had so many warm fuzzy memories tied up in that place…and a few distinctly not-fuzzy ones (though the warmth was still there...in the form Holtz kicking a flaming barrel down the stairs to flush them out)...
"You're making an angry face," she said quietly as they walked along. "While you do have the complexion for it, you've got more laugh lines than you do frown wrinkles, and it looks a little odd."
"Trust me, sweet cheeks, if I had stayed in L.A. much longer, this frown would be impossible to turn upside down."
"Because of Lindsey?"
"You're doing that Higher Power bit again," he pointed out, "Trying to sneak a peek at what's going on between these two little horns of mine."
She grabbed his hand and spun out, twirling away from him. The skirt flared in a pinwheel of black and white. Though the two colors danced, they never quite seemed to mix together to make gray. That little thought pleased him—he'd been around way too much gray lately. "It's in the job description: Supernatural Counselor and Ass-Kicker—says so on my business card."
"You've got a business card?"
She shrugged. "Well, if I had a business card, that's what it would say. Maybe I should get some printed up, if I'm going to be spending time on the mortal plane. What do you think?"
"I'm thinking a dark emerald green with gold type, Courier font."
"Gold? Too flashy."
"Copper then—like your hair right now."
She fluffed the curls. "You like?"
"You look fabulous, sugar doll, like first season Felicity with a splash of 7th Heaven." He spun her back in and hooked her arm back through his, then giving her hand a little pat. "Do you have a name other than "The Oracle"?"
Abruptly, she halted their procession and settled herself on a bench outside a storefront. The store was a tacky little tourist shop with bars over the windows and a security door. It was closed right now, though the sign in the window was still flipped to 'Open'. She took a pack of cigarettes out of a hidden pocket in her skirt and knocked one into her hand. "I don't know." She put the cigarette between her lips but didn't light it. "I honestly don't know."
Her mood had rocketed so suddenly from perky to pouty that Lorne knew he touched a nerve. He patted her knee. "Why don't you tell Uncle Lorne what's bothering you, sweet stuff?"
She shrugged, trying to just brush it off. The cigarette came out of her mouth, and she knocked it against the bar of the bench. If it had been lit, the gesture would have sent a little shower of ash to the pavement. "I don't remember my human name, if I ever had one. I was The Oracle from the time I was ten-years-old until I died. My visions have pretty much defined my whole existence."
"Why don't you pick a name?" he suggested. He was a little leery about a Higher Power running around without a name after that mess with Jasmine.
"How do you just pull a name out of thin air? What if it isn't the right one for you?"
"It's better than my mother—who wouldn't know music if it bit her on the butt cheek—trying to name me. Do you know what 'Krevlorneswath' means in Pylean? Actually, scratch that, you don't want to know. Let's just say it's not the most flattering name ever plucked from a head with hair on it, and completely inappropriate for me."
"But you shortened it to Lorne."
"So much less of a mouthful. Now, you said you were Greek, right? How about 'Cassandra'?"
She looked at him as if he might have lost a marble or three.
"Come on—it's classic and it just screams 'Vision Girl'."
"Cassandra got killed by her captor's jealous wife."
Lorne waved it off. "Minor details, and, besides, you can always shorten it."
"Not to Cassy—I hate 'Cassy'."
"Ok, how about 'Cass'…rhymes with 'sass', and that, girl, you have plenty of."
She thought about it for a minute, then, slowly, nodded. "Cass…I like the sound of that. Cass and Lorne, ready for a night out on the town." Flicking the intact cigarette into the gutter, she rose and offered him her hand. "Ready to find that swing dancing?"
'When if comes to dancing, I was born ready."
--
Lorne and Cass didn't get back to her suite on the twenty-ninth floor of the Bellagio until eight o'clock the next morning. Both were exhausted but wearing goofy grins as they stumbled out of the elevator. "Delicious digs you've got here, girl," he told her after she unlocked door to her room and let him in.
"A guy owed me a favor—big one—and I decided to cash it in," she said as she flopped in one of the richly upholstered chairs that were part of the small dinette set. With a snap of her fingers, she was back to shoulder-length blond hair like she had in the bar; only, this time, she wore a baggy pajama pants and a tank top. "Hadn't seen the place yet. Help yourself to anything in the minibar…or we could order room service. Shiavo's paying."
"Shiavo?" he asked in surprised, "As in the one and only Dirk Shiavo who just happens to be the hottest magic act in town?"
"So you've heard of him," Cass said as she reached for the phone and the room service menu. "He's a demon, you know."
"Oh, I know, honey child, I got him his jig here in Vegas back when I was working for Evil Incorporated." She waved the menu at him, and he looked it over. "The fruit plate, I think." He sank into the couch and propped his sore feet up on the arm. There had been swing dancing—just as she'd promised—followed by a stop for a quick caffeine hit at an all-night diner after they'd closed out Louie's, and then they'd ducked into a comic book convention at one of the other hotels (he wasn't sure which one…it had been that kind of mind-blowing, whirlwind night). Vegas, Lorne decided, (nasty memories of a certain former jig here aside) was his kind of town. Everyone just assumed that the green guy with horns was part of the act or was from the comic con. There were even a few who recognized him and asked for his autograph. He chuckled slightly as he remembered the two middle-aged women who had stopped him on the street, blushing, as they held out copies of an old poster to be signed. "Sugar cake," he said when she got off the phone with the room service folks, "Have I told you what a wonderful time I've been having with you—you devilish, little, dancing doll, you?"
"Twice since we left Louie's," she answered with a smile. She wiggled her toes and pair of blue bunny slippers appeared on her feet. "And three or four times while we were still there. I think you were trying to strike up a conversation so I'd give you a breather in between dances." Her green eyes were all mischief at the moment.
He lounged back against the throw pillows. "I liked Louie's—reminded me a bit of a sweet little karaoke bar I used to run back in L.A. called Caritas. Most of my customers were demons, but, hey, so am I, so who am I to complain? Besides, with the wardings I had installed, violence was a big no-no. Saved me having to pay a bouncer's salary."
She sat there, listening, with her legs curled under her. Her expression said 'cat' to him. Curious little cat absolutely enthralled with his rambling.
"I'm anagogic—but I'm sure that's in your little case file, probably right between my name and what color loofah I prefer—so demons come in, they sing, I give them a few pointers as to what not to do in the near and not-so distant future. Sometimes, the reading was worth the ear-strain; sometimes, the divine performance was worth the glimpse at the singer's interior nasty. Though," he paused, "I have to say the second case was the rarer of the two. Lindsey McDonald used to come in every few nights or so. I always got the feeling that he didn't have much of a social life—a real workaholic, you know."
She nodded, and he kept going. "Lindsey would come in, he'd get up on stage with his guitar, and, lordy, could that boy sing. He could have made it big—could have had his name up in lights here… Then, there was that business with Angel and the hand getting chopped off and Darla, and then…" Lorne trailed off.
He was saved from continuing by a knock at the door. "I'll get it," Cass assured him as she unfolded herself and crossed the room, limping just a little. Made him feel a little better knowing that her tootsies had had it tough too. She came back out of the foyer a moment later with a tray in hand.
"Sounds like he had depths to him that Angel didn't know about," she said as she set the tray on the dinette table. "Lindsey, I mean. Do you want coffee?"
He shook his head, "Give me any more caffeine and you're going to have to peel me off the ceiling with a spatula, angel-wings. And, no, Angel knew that Lindsey played the guitar—I told him after he hacked off Lindsey's hand with a scythe during some ritual." Lorne made a face, "You'd think those two were long-lost brothers, the way they squabbled—Cain and Abel reincarnated, and I was the one who got stuck trying to counsel both of them. Not that they'd ever actually listen to me."
She handed him the fruit plate. "You do realize that you're helping me with my job by telling me this, right? I just want to make sure you know that since, yeah, earlier you pretty much told me to piss off."
Lorne waved off her concern. "I didn't know you then, honey doll, and when you've got the kind of track record that I have with the Powers—That Be or otherwise—you start getting a teensy bit paranoid."
"Ok." Cass had ordered French toast, and she was currently drizzling even more maple syrup on to the already saturated bread. "What do you want, Lorne?"
"Oh, I'm perfectly content with the fruit plate, peach pit," he assured her, holding up a slice of apple for her viewing pleasure.
"I meant out of life. What do you want to do with your life?"
That was the big whammy, wasn't it? Cass didn't pull any punches, Lorne decided, though she did take her sweet time getting around to the point. Truth time, as much as he didn't want to be spilling his inner most desires to a Higher Power on general principle, she seemed like someone he should be spilling to. "I want to make everyone happy," he admitted, then threw up his hands. "I know, I know, pipe dream and all that, so I just settle for making as many people as I reasonably can happy. That's the great part about entertaining, sugar cakes—you get up on that stage and you've got a chance to touch every single person in the room if you're good enough and they're receptive to it. It's beautiful, kid."
She smiled, and it wasn't a smug "oh, listen to the green guy natter smile". "Sounds like it."
"So what's on your agenda next, doll face? Now, that you've got my answer and your night on the town?"
"Hell and Lindsey McDonald," she muttered into a mouthful of French toast. She did not sound particularly thrilled. She stuffed the piece into her mouth and chewed absently as she swirled her fork around in the excess syrup. "Then someone named Anya Emerson." She reached down and fished the folded up piece of paper out of one of her bunny slippers. Snapping it open, she frowned. "It just says 'Placement Pending—See the Receiving Office'."
Lorne had heard of the Receiving Office. It was a hell dimension, sort of. Actually, it was only considered a hell dimension because Heaven didn't have the office space to accommodate it. Maybe it was just safer to say it was on an alternative plane between here and the Hereafter. People who didn't have an obvious destination when they died got stuck there until they got sorted out. An all-around interesting place to go, or so he'd been told by several of his more reputable customers when he still had Caritas--a sort of interdimensional Grand Central Station. He'd always wanted to go and just do some people-watching, so long as he wasn't dead and could get out again. "You know…" he said, "I've always had a hankering to see the Receiving Office, and, since I figured you're up to your eyeballs in work, maybe I could go for you and just see how things are with this Anya Emerson. So you'll have a preliminary report for when you're done with Hell Boy there."
She dropped the fork and was across the room and squeezing the air out of him with a back-cracking hug before he had the chance to blink.
"Air, sweet cheeks, I need air," he croaked.
She let him go and sat back on her heels beside the couch (and on his fruit, he noticed, a bit miffed at the sight of her bunny slipper in the banana slices). "Sorry…but would you really be willing to go for me? The Powers That Be didn't give me a time table, but I've got this nagging feeling that I'm on a deadline, and They just haven't told me yet, and…"
"Slow down there," Lorne said soothingly. "Just show me how to get to the Receiving Office, and I'll take a look around."
"Oh, that's easy—I can open a portal for you whenever you're ready. Though, you may want to take a nap first. You look a little tired."
"Because somebody kept me out dancing all night," he complained with a wink and nudge. "But a little bit of beauty sleep never hurt anyone. Sweet dreams, pumpkin tart." He scooted down into the couch and closed his eyes.
"Thanks—you too. I'm gonna go finished my French toast. And, Lorne…"
He cracked one red eye open. "Yes?"
"Thanks again for volunteering."